A pastel landscape of grass-covered hills framing a rocky outcropping, with a striped survey barrier visible in the gap between them. Leon inscribed the sheet directly with handwritten text, including the phrase that gives the work its title — “somewhere below this line the experience tapers off” — along with a date reading January 1977 and what appears to be a series number. The pairing of observed landscape with inscribed language is consistent with Leon’s practice in this period, when pastel and charcoal drawings ran alongside his outdoor site installations and frequently incorporated text directly into the image.

About the Artist

Dennis Leon (1933–1998) was born in London and immigrated to the United States in 1951, settling in Philadelphia, where he earned his BFA and MFA at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. He served as art critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer (1959–1962) and taught at the Philadelphia College of Art before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1972, where he chaired the sculpture department at California College of Arts and Crafts until his retirement in 1993. A key figure in the American Land Art movement, Leon worked across sculpture, collage, drawing, and site-specific installation, with pastel landscapes forming a central thread through the 1970s and ’80s. His work is held in the collections of SFMOMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Crocker Art Museum, among others.